Marking Time
by sk8rluvr2493
Summary: Marking Time is a story about my experiences in marching band, and the high school life in general.
1. Prologue

It's a Saturday morning, and what else would I be doing other than sitting on a school bus heading to my first marching band competition of the season. You would probably think that I'd be used to sitting in this not-so-comfortable seat by now since this is my fourth year in the marching Spartan band (aka MSB). However, that would be a false assumption on your part. Being in the Spartan band, me and the rest of my fellow veterans, have gotten used to many things that seem to occur on the average band trip. Some of these things consist of hearing someone yelling, "I can't find my pants!!" "Blow harder!!" or, "could someone unzip me?" I could only go on and on about the this topic.

But anyways since this is a pretty long bus ride I'm going to use this time to tell you about me. My name is Braiden Smith; I'm a junior at Weston High School in Eastern Pennsylvania, average height-wise, semi-long/straight dirty blonde hair, but pretty much always up in a ponytail . I'm not what you would call a "girly girl", although my best friend is working on that. I enjoy playing and watching sports; you could probably say it's a pretty big part of my life. Most of my friends could tell you that I know a lot about sports, more then what most guys here would know. Also, I'm an only child, unless you would count my little puppy. But as much as anyone of you would want to argue, I definitely got the best group of friends any guy or girl could ask for . I get pretty good grades, generally on the honor roll, I stay out of trouble, not that I even have time to find trouble to get into, with school, "hell work", practice, competitions, and of course: sleeping.

Well, Weston is pretty much your typical high school, there's your general school subjects, and electives that you can take, a wide variety of clubs, and sports of course, but what would any high school be without the clicks. If you didn't figure it out yet, I would of course belong to the bando click here at Weston High. Being a bando isn't exactly a bad thing, I mean after all, it's not like you get picked on or anything, and in fact some of the bandos are pretty well known throughout our school. Don't get me wrong, bandos aren't, I guess you could say, popular, but there are a few names that are pretty well known, just not as big as the star football players and ewh cheerleaders.

Do forgive me for going on about that with out telling you more about me. Since you know I'm in band, I'm a percussionist, and for those who don't know percussion is the typical drums, keyboards, chimes, and all those other funny auxiliary instruments we get to yes I must say this bang on haha. Like I said earlier this is my fourth year, no I didn't a year, here a Weston you can actually be in the high school marching band starting in 7th and 8th grade which like most schools is the last two years of middle school. Some things are more different this year then in the past. The top two things being well for me anyway my best friend Trish graduated last year so she obviously cant be in anymore, and the other thing being is we have pretty much a brand new staff minus the color guard coach.

Since most of you wouldn't understand why not having Trish here is a big thing for me I'll have to tell you a quick rundown of her since I'm sure you'll be hearing plenty about and from her through out this. Well Trish is purely an amazing girl that just happens to be my best friend, but more like my big sis: she's a brunette, with sort of long wavy hair, about my height. She came up with the motto one brunette, one blonde, and one inseparable bond, and this definitely is true well for us anyway. Trish was a bando here at Weston, but that not where we first met. Actually, I first met Trish when we were just little kiddies when we played soccer against each other, but that's a story for later. There is just so much to say about here I can't even pick what else to tell you.

By now you get the idea that Trish is pretty much a big sister to me. But since she graduated last year, she's not on this great bus ride of what seems to be an eternity. Lucky for me I have a bunch of great friends, some in the WSB and some that just attend Weston, and some are in college. In particular there always been a group of four of us Trish, me, Lacey, and Baylyn that seemed to get along great . Besides constantly seeing each other everyday at school, and at least 4 times a week because of band we hangout with each other outside of all that when we aren't busy. All of us would randomly burst out singing some random song no matter where we were at the time. We would proudly admit that we were dorks for it but we don't care because it makes life a blast instead of being gloomy.

Baylyn is a senior this year at Weston. She is guardo in the MSB, and for those who don't know what that is, well she spins, flips, tosses flags, rifles, sabers, and several other objects. She is really easy to get along with, has a great sense of humor, and always in willing to help a friend in need. Baylyn and me are usually talking baseball, since there is a local AAA team about 5-10 minutes from Weston. Your probably thinking okay why would teenaged girls talk and go to baseball games, it has to be because of the players. However, me and Baylyn actually really understand the game and enjoy watching it. Don't get me wrong we definitely have a few players in our eyes that we well are obsessed with lol. She's a really smarty though, if you would need homework help she is definitely one of you first picks. If me or anyone of her friends is bummed out, she is one of the first people there asking if your okay and if she can help, or even if its just one of those blah days she is guaranteed to say something like just think of a locker room party with cervy. Sorry guys that's a totally insider most of you wont understand but a few do get it =]. Like I said with Trish and will say with Lacey there is just some much that great about her it will come out in the story over time.

Now finally we are at Lacey, she a junior just like me here a Weston. Lacey is also a guardo in the MSB. When we are with each other most people ask if we are twins, and we kind of got caught up on this whole idea and well we just call each other twinny (ps. we could pull of being real twins). Me and her are a lot alike, we like country music, share many blonde moments, young guns of the group but yet mature, we know our stuff when it comes to outdoors and cars. Lacey like Trish and Baylyn will always be there to cheer you up if your down, and lend a hand with anything you need. There is one thing that kind of throws of this twinny thing, and that being Lacey is definitely more girly then me. Don't get me wrong she's not hardcore girly but she will wear makeup and does her hair all nice. On the other hand I'm kind of the girl that brushes it up into a ponytail and just sticks with a t-shirt and jeans. Back to Lacey, well she what we would call clumsy lol, or as she would say it takes skill to trip over nothing, but this just prove why we can't help but to love her. Like me she always up for something new or an adventure to kill time, instead of going insane of boredom. At first Lacey would probably come off as shy to you, but once you get to know her shy is definitely not a word to describe her. Now you know my 4 of my besties, later you will learn of my other besties.

Prologue


	2. Chapter 1

Well I just took a quick glance out the window next to me, and it apparently started raining and we were only on the bus for about an hour so far. Rainy weather is by far not the ideal situation for any competition let alone the first one of the season. This bus is kind of loud and noisy or in band terms ¦¦ ,but as usual everyone is sitting in their area of their mini cliques within the band. Sometimes I just seem to hear the wrong part of all the conversations like "it's better on top" but that turned out to be about jello and whipped cream. That reminds me one thing you definitely should know about bandos is that practically anything you say can and will be turned into something perverted.

The bus windows seem to be completely fogged up and before you think it no there is not any of that funny business going on, it is purely just pouring down rain now. But this rain only sparks sighs and moans of disgust from us, mostly because us vets know that nothing good will come from this and will only cause extreme chaos. By this time a lot of people have fallen asleep, except of course the obnoxious ones that you just want to throw your dinkles (shoes that marching bands wear to be uniform) at them. As for me, Baylyn and Lacey we are just relaxing, and listening to my ipod. Apparently we have almost arrived at our first competition of the season but due to the rain and traffic that I guess we got stuck in, we lost about half of our warm up time. A few of us have decided to do a quick sing through on the bus of our show, just to make sure we remember our parts.

We have arrived at Quentin high school, just about 30 min from Hershey the sweetest place on earth. As the bus and equipment truck try and find a place to park where we can unload without being in puddles getting muddy before we perform. First thing we do is take a walk to find bathrooms, little did we know that the girls will have a line out the door because there is only two stalls. In an effort to make this line to pee move faster, we unzip each other while standing in line and complain and make stupid jokes. When we all were finished and zipped back up, we headed back to the bus and equipment truck to finish unloading our instruments, that the people who didn't go to the bathroom get out yet.

Now that everything we need is unloaded and ready to go, it's time for the pit to load up the gator with all the stuff that's almost impossible to push everywhere, such as chimes, timpani, bells, trap tables, and other odds and ends we need to make different sound effects to go along with our Halloween themed show. As one of our beloved band parents drives the gator to our warm up area, the pit pushes all the big keyboards and the band and guard march in two lines. I must say that I do highly enjoy being the oldest member in the pit, it has it advantages when it comes to pick what instrument I get to push and who's helping me. It just pretty much guarantees that I always get Rebekah to help me, which is definitely one of the best keyboard pushers. Not to mention she usually stops me from stressing over my part and just perform it like we practiced.

Pushing the keyboards through muddy grass and puddles is just purely exhausting for us. We finally get to our warm up area, and we run through our warm up exercise variation eights and our drum instructor Scott or Mr. Ryan Sr. has us do a crescendo and decrescendo exercise. By the time we are done doing this the band has come over and joined us to do a run through our show once or twice before moving to the stadium to perform our show for the first time this season. Most of us vets aren't to nervous about performing our show, its just more of excitement and I guess you could say anxiety for some. But over time you just seem to get used to the feeling you get when your about to perform.

By this time Scott told the pit members to start loading the gator with the instruments that can't be easily moved. So only naturally all of us 7 pit members parted our separate ways and pretty much grabbed the instruments we always go to first to avoid the ones we find to be evil. For example the concert bass drum that always seems to hit the back of your heels when your pulling it. With so many less experienced pit members that can clearly be a disaster waiting to happen.. Anyway back to what I was saying, the best way to describe the seen of the MSB right at this moment is a mash pit with instruments and obnoxious talking. Some how it always seems to work out the when ever the pit gets to actually get a bottle of water from the band parents, we always have to drink it on the run so to speak. You can only imagine that us drinking on the run doesn't end well, at least we have black uniforms if we would spill.

To The Ready….


End file.
